iPhone Inching Towards Top Spot in U.S.

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RIM's Blackberry is the most popular smartphone in the U.S., but Apple's iPhone is closing the gap quickly. RIM currently commands 40 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, and Apple holds 30 percent, according to data from ChangeWave.

The research firm interviews 4,255 consumers in September and found that 36 percent of the respondents planning to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days were choosing an iPhone. In contrast, only 27 percent planned to buy a Blackberry.

While Apple is rapidly gaining share in the smartphone market, RIM is slowly declining. Palm, once the dominant player in the smartphone market, has dropped dramatically from 36 percent at the beginning of 2006 down to seven percent in September 2009.

Apple's quick climb in the smartphone market has placed its numbers surprisingly close to RIM's. If the trend continues, the iPhone could soon be the best selling smartphone in the U.S.

Jeff Gamet

Jeff Gamet

Jeff is the Mac Observer's Managing Editor, and co-host of the Apple Context Machine podcast. He is the author of "The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X" from Peachpit Press, and writes for several design-related publications. Jeff has presented at events such as Macworld Expo, the RSA Conference, and the Mac Computer Expo. In all his spare time, he also co-hosts the We Have Communicators podcast, and makes guest appearances on several other podcasts, too. Jeff dreams in HD.

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2 Comments

Jeff Gamet

As I recall, Palm was the company that said Apple couldn’t just walk into the smartphone market with a hit product. I’m betting no one is allowed to talk about that in the Palm campus cafeteria.

aardman

I always thought RIM had a slim-to-nothing chance against iPhone.  For RIM, with zero experience in selling a consumer electronic product, to go against Apple who wrote the book on it, that is asking a lot of RIM.  A bunch of engineers against the acknowledged master of consumer electronics product-development-and-marketing, how else would you handicap this race?

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